Radiant heat flux map of El Salvador using satellite remote sensing

Abstract

El Salvador is in a region populated with volcanos in the Pacific Ring of Fire, this gives rise to the presence of geothermal phenomena, which are of interest for the study of the implementation of applications that make use of this geothermal resource in the country. In this research, the use of remote sensing data obtained from satellite images and other sources is implemented with the goal of obtaining information related to the Earth, like terrain emissivity, land surface temperature, ambient temperature, among various types of spectral information provided by these sources which were implemented. Obtaining this data is highly valuable for calculating various parameters, like vegetation indexes, land surface temperature, atmospheric transmissivity, and radiative heat flux, which is the main goal of this research. With the data obtained, a map of El Salvador will be made, in which the result will show and classify the information regarding the heat flux values. In addition, an analysis of these values in points of geothermal interest is also presented. The heat flux map generated will be useful to identify areas that present surface geothermal manifestations that are of possible geothermal interest, the heat fluxes in these areas will be obtained for each satellite scene captured by Landsat 8 in 2019 and the average annual heat flux. Volcanic areas that present high heat fluxes will be used as a reference for surface manifestations.